Barely a week sooner than the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) ends, a parliamentary standing committee has requested the Meals Ministry to manufacture an “just review” and uncover to what extent the contrivance has helped beneficiaries and for how long it needs to be continued.
Whereas “applauding” the Centre for launching PMGKAY, the Committee acknowledged the ministry had “no longer implemented or proposed a matter or an just review” of the foodgrains contrivance launched in 2020 as the authorities’s economic response to the Covid pandemic.“The Covid-19 pandemic has affected your entire country in a pair of systems. It has impacted the food provide system with voice and oblique consequences on lives and livelihood of of us, significantly essentially the most inclined sections of the society,” acknowledged a document of the Standing Committee on Meals, Person Affairs and Public Distribution, tabled in Lok Sabha on Tuesday.The Committee is headed by TMC leader and MP, Sudip Bandyopadhyay.The PMGKAY supplied an additional 5 kilograms of foodgrains per month to beneficiaries of the National Meals Safety Act.Spread over 5 phases, with a total allocation of Rs 759.22 lakh tonnes and financial implication pegged at Rs 2.68 lakh crore, the contrivance is scheduled to total March 31, 2022.The Meals Ministry had earlier told the Standing Committee extension of the contrivance beyond March, 2022, would be regarded as by it “in step with the prevailing issue” in the country.Looking at that food subsidy is “smooth very excessive” and there could be “scope to cleave it further”, the Committee has requested the food department to optimise the Meals Subsidy Invoice.Whereas doing so, nevertheless, the department could maybe well also no longer compromise the requires of beneficiaries and likewise the preparedness for unwarranted eventualities such as Covid-19, it acknowledged.The Committee also expressed considerations on the huge dues owed to the Meals Company of India (FCI) by some departments.“The Committee notes with scenario that a natty amount of dues are prominent in opposition to the Ministry of Rural Building and Ministry of Human Resource Building (now Ministry of Schooling) on legend of foodgrains supplied to them by FCI for quite loads of welfare schemes on cost foundation,” the document acknowledged.“The Committee feels that inability to liquidate the prominent dues of FCI over the years would adversely affect the functioning of FCI and place burden on ever-rising Meals Subsidy Invoice,” the document acknowledged.
